Fluid Construction Grammar can be downloaded as part of the Babel 2 software package. Babel 2 is a general cognitive framework that connects FCG with language technologies for conceptualization and interpretation, and with mechanisms for cognitive processing, learning, multi-agent interactions, and robotic embodiment. For more information on downloading Babel 2, click here !

As of 2015, a new notation for FCG has been introduced. The details and a few examples can be found in the article ‘Basics of Fluid Construction Grammar’ by Luc Steels, to appear in Constructions and Frames. You can download a draft of the article here. A web demonstration that supports the article is available too.

Natural language processing is one of the most challenging and important areas in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. At Sony CSL Paris, we have pioneered new language technologies based on “constructional” language processing for achieving deep semantic analyses and bidirectional grammars for language production and comprehension.

Job description

We are currently looking for a software engineer / computational linguist who will develop an industrial-strength implementation of our open-source software platform “Fluid Construction Grammar”. Your responsibilities include:

– Implementation of an industrial-strength grammar architecture based on Fluid Construction Grammar (www.fcg-net.org);

– Minimum of 5 years of experience in developing projects, preferably in NLP research or related domains

– Independent worker with leadership abilities and the ability to cooperate in a constantly evolving international team

– Multilingual speaker

– Experience in programming languages and in particular symbolic programming

Our offer:

You will earn a competitive salary and get to work in the heart of Paris (5th arrondissement). Extra benefits include meal vouchers, 50% reimbursement of your public transport subscription, and an attractive health insurance contract.

About Sony CSL Paris

Sony CSL Paris was founded in 1996 and is a small but booming research cell, focusing on the following areas: personal music experience, developmental cognitive robots, self-organizing communication systems, and sustainable environment simulation.

Sony Computer Science Laboratory is engaged in several European projects such as FLOW MACHINES, PRAISE, IDGF, LRN2CRE8 and other projects.

Research in Personal Music Experience focuses on the future of musical listening by building prototypes of interactive devices and ethnographic experiments to see what people find exciting in music and how new ways of listening integrate in their lives.

Research in Language is dedicated to constructional language processing and self-organising communication systems. Constructional language processing is a novel approach to the production and comprehension of language that based on rich semantics and a powerful data structure called “constructions”. Research in self-organizing communication systems investigates through computational simulations and mathematical models how a group of autonomous agents/robots could be able to invent and negotiate a communication system similar to human natural languages.

How to build a sustainable society has recently become a major issue as natural resources get depleted and climate change is of great concern. Sony CSL Paris has launched a number of projects to raise awareness about the issues through volunteer computing and participatory food production.

Sony CSL Paris plays a leading role in the areas it has chosen to be active in. It produces a steady stream of papers in the most prestigious journals and conferences. The lab is viewed as highly innovative and plays a leading role in European IT research.

Contact

Candidates should send their cv and motivation letter to Dr Remi van Trijp (remi@csl.sony.fr) before 28 June 2017. The contract starts 1 september 2017.

We are organising a two-day (6h) practical course on Fluid Construction Grammar. The course is part of the Interdisciplinary College (IK) Spring School in Günne, Germany and takes place on 15-16 March 2017.

Construction Grammar is an innovative approach to language that focuses strongly on semantics, cognitive processes and learning. As such, it has the potential to lead to more powerful language technologies and more comprehensive accounts of language processing than psychology and computational linguistics are able to offer today. This course will teach its participants how the key concepts of construction grammar can be implemented in computational models for deep language processing that are capable of both comprehension and formulation. Moreover, students will also learn how to implement learning operators for more robust processing, and how to evaluate their grammars. Each session will take the form of a hands-on atelier using Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG), an advanced computational platform for developing constructional processing and learning models.

We are proud to announce the 30th issue of the Belgian Journal of Linguistics on Computational Construction Grammar and Constructional Change. Please join us for two keynotes and a festive reception on Monday 19 December 2016, at 4pm, in the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels.

More information on the program and the registration (free but mandatory) can be found on the event’s webpage.

As part of the SONY CSL Paris open day on October 27th, we will be demonstrating the latest features and applications of Fluid Construction Grammar. In particular, we are proud to debut two important new developments in FCG. Firstly, FCG Interactive, a web application that gives you the power of FCG from your own web browser, is live and in its beta release. Secondly, our first large scale English grammar, developed by Remi Van Trijp, will be available on FCG Interactive. On the FCG application side of things, we will demonstrate how FCG can be used to solve challenging English-Japanese machine translation. This takes the form of a live, multi-lingual, chat room translation demo.
The ‘Constructional Language Processing’ and ‘Participative multi-user multi-language chat room’ demos will be running from 15:00 – 20:00. Registration is free and the event is open to everyone, so please do come along.

This symposium is primarily targeting researchers in natural language processing/understanding and computational linguistics, but will have broader appeal to the larger AI community, specifically researchers in knowledge representation, man-machine interaction, and machine learning. The symposium focuses on recent TECHNICAL advances in computational formalisms for construction grammar, machine learning of construction grammar, and use of construction grammar in natural language understanding and production. The presentation and demonstration of working systems is highly encouraged.

Paper submissions may take the form of long papers (4-8 pages in AAAI format, including references) for oral presentation or short papers (up to 4 pages in AAAI format, including references) for poster presentation. Evidence of a working implementation, e.g. through a web-accessible demonstration, is highly encouraged. Individual submissions for oral or short papers are due by OCTOBER 28 and authors will be notified by November 29. There will be one or more hands-on interactive sessions where participants can show implemented CxG systems.

Description: Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris is a small but booming research cell in the center of Paris (France). It currently offers an internship of 6 months in its language team. During the internship, you will develop a basic grammar for Japanese and integrate the grammar within an existing Machine Translation application for Japanese-English and English-Japanese. As part of the internship, you will receive formation in the language technologies developed at Sony CSL Paris, including a.o. Fluid Construction Grammar (www.fcg-net.org). You will receive a renumeration for your internship that complies to French legislation and Sony’s staff agreements. Sony is an equal opportunity employer and encourages anyone with the right qualifications to apply (requested background: Master student in computer science, computational linguistics, artificial intelligence or equivalent). Please send your resume and motivation letter to Dr Remi van Trijp (remi@csl.sony.fr).

A tutorial on the basics of Fluid Construction Grammar will be held on 17 December 2015 in Leuven on the occasion of the Morphology Days 2015. Katrien Beuls and Paul Van Eecke will lead the two-hour tutorial and guide you through the basic grammar operations and the new simplified notation that should make it easier to understand the kind of constructional processing FCG makes possible.